


All Better

by andmilestogobeforeyousleep



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 04:31:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16485968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andmilestogobeforeyousleep/pseuds/andmilestogobeforeyousleep
Summary: 13/River prompt: kiss it all better





	All Better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celebratoryfondue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebratoryfondue/gifts).



> this is unbeta-ed written for Elliot (doctorwhomst) *still glaring at you*
> 
> If it's shite, i know it.

_After_ , they spend a fortnight together in the TARDIS or running around the universe having adventures. The next morning the Doctor wakes and reaches for her wife. Fear grows within her as she feels only cold sheets and a lingering absence.

The Doctor opens her eyes as River stalks into their room with a suitcase. The Doctor smiles. “Planning another honeymoon, are you, sweetie?” She chuckles as she watches her wife ruffle through their clothes, putting things into the suitcase now and again.

“No, my love,” River looks as if she’s guilty of something. But the Doctor lets it slide, there can’t be anything ruining her wife being back, is there? “I am going back to Luna. I have to see about my things, and my job, and my _home_.”

The Doctor flinches at the word. _Home_. She considers Luna her home now. Not Earth. Not Leadworth. Or New York where her parents lived.

“Can I come with you then?” The Doctor gets up from the bed, leaning on her elbows. She brightens up with the idea of spending time alone with River, surrounded by her own things, relics of her life. “It would be nice to have little time away from blazing guns and marathons away from death, wouldn’t it?”

River stops while folding one of her leather jackets, her back to the Doctor. There is a fear blossoming between the Doctor's hearts.

River turns and smiles. The fear is silenced. “Of course you may come, sweetie.” The fear is silenced, at least for now.

 

 

The Doctor is getting restless after three weeks of frolicking and just lying about in Luna University and around River’s house in the outskirts of campus. They’ve gone from being an adventure-seeking, thrill-thirsty couple to a pretty domestic old married couple.

A Johnny Cash song is playing when it happens. The Doctor was admittedly distracted but she decided to surprise River that morning with breakfast in bed. She was quite nervous about having cooked pancakes for her wife. But nothing, not a thing in all of her lives and experiences, prepared her for the look she saw in River’s eyes when she walked through the door.

The Doctor’s grip on the breakfast tray loosened and everything splattered and shattered on the ground.

The song is still playing but the Doctor only hears a muffled version of it. River is sitting on the bed in her pajamas looking blankly at the Doctor. The Doctor fiddles with her braces, it’s the only thing she could do to stop herself from crying. They look at each other for moments on end.

“River, please tell me it’s not what I’m thinking.”

No answer. Just strings of tears starting to stream down her cheeks, which she quickly wipes away. The fear between her hearts has blossomed into a terrifying bouquet.

“Do you.. you want me to leave?”

“No.”

The song had ended and the silence has settled like darkness upon a sleepy town.

“Are you waiting for me to leave, then?”

“Yes…”

The Doctor’s hearts skip a beat.

“Yes?”

“Yes…I don’t know. I might be. Doctor, I…”

The Doctor takes in a deep breath and tears start to sting her eyes. The Doctor has never seen River Song so calm, not even in sleep. It occurs to her that River has pondered upon this for a while.

“Is it something that I did? I’m sorry, okay? For whatever I did wrong! Anything, everything I did wrong, River! I know they’re in abundance!” She’s rambling now and she knows it. And the Doctor knows she’s going to do anything to right whatever this is.

River turns to her with a look so painful the Doctor’s hearts constrict.

“Everytime I close my eyes I see the way you looked at me the first time you met me.”

“River, I didn’t know you then but I know you now! There is not one person in all of time and space I would like to know the way I know you,” the Doctor's hearts are drumming in her ears.

“And when I close my eyes again I see the way you looked at me when I first met you,” she says hoarsely, desperately drying her tears. “This you, I mean.”

Penny in the air.

“Why, River? I was happy to..to see you…”

“The way you looked at me, like I was a ghost that has been haunting you for millennia come to life. I guess that is true, if you choose to look at it a certain way.” She hugs her middle, her curls forming a curtain upon her face. The Doctor itches to get close to her, to strip away the pain she’s causing her wife. “You looked at me as though you were never meant to see me again.”

The penny drops.

The Doctor runs to her but she backs away, flinching against her touch.

“No, Doctor. We can’t do this anymore. You have a life. You have new friends who very much like travelling with you. You don’t need me. Not anymore.”

The Doctor tentatively touches her cheek with tears spilling in her eyes. River doesn’t protest this time. She melts into the Doctor’s touch.

“River, listen to me. I need you. I need you more than anything. You are the very best thing that has ever happened to me.  Don’t you dare see yourself so little, my lovely River Song.”

“Doctor, you should go. There is no good achieved with you being here. I am just keeping you from the universe. I am no longer as foolish as I once was.”

“River, why are you making me go? I want to stay.”

“Yes, you want to. But you’ve never really been good at staying still.” River’s voice is small but forceful. “You walk around this house, my house, all day like a nice wife, like you really like it. But I know. I know you, Doctor. One day you will get bored with the house, or with the garden, or with me and off you will go. And you will once again go where I cannot follow.”

It is the Doctor’s turn to back away this time. “Well, how about you come with me then? Always. All the time. Of all places. River, we can travel together! You can come with me! We can be together. Always. Like we should. Because we belong together.”

River sighs as she hands over the bowtie the Doctor didn’t notice she had been gripping.

“You know I can’t. It’s just not who I am. I am not like anyone else, Doctor. I know my place in the world now. And I am staying here…you should go. The Old Girl is waiting for you, your friends, they’re all waiting for you.”

The Doctor sets the bowtie down and holds River close. They are clinging to each other, their foreheads pressed against the other’s.

“River, no. I can’t! I can’t go!”

“You have to. You have to let me go.”

“No! I have done that and it didn’t stop the pain that grew like callous around my hearts. I have you now. I have you with me. Never again will I leave you. I am not leaving even if you make me. I know you. I know you want me here. I am not leaving.”

“I am scared, Doctor. All the time. The way you looked at me, I’m scared I will see that in your eyes again.”

“Never. I promise you. Never again, River.”

River inches ever closer to the Doctor. The Doctor kisses River’s cheek chastely, kissing away the tears. Doing only what she can do, kissing it all better.

 


End file.
